The Impact of Auschwitz ...

​“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

​​The Holocaust remains the largest human genocide (by death toll), with an estimated 16 million people killed under the Nazi regime. Auschwitz was the largest single site of extermination of a people considered ethnically "untermenschen" (sub-human). Travelling to Krakow for the weekend, I felt a responsibility to visit.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is described as a memorial and a museum, but it’s no tourist attraction. It is what remains of the largest concentration and extermination camp built by the Nazis in the second world war. It is the place where more than 1.5 million people - mostly European Jews - were systematically murdered. It is the place where people - for no crime, but simply because of their race - were incarcerated and exterminated under a bureaucratic, state funded regime of ethnic cleansing. It is where those people’s fate was sealed with a flick of the thumb, by the selecting SS guard, to the left or to the right. For those deemed, upon a cursory glance, to be too old, young or weak, that fate would be immediate extermination in one of the gas chambers. For those deemed healthy or useful (such as doctors), that fate would be to work as slave labourers in abhorrent conditions, stripped of all humanity; which ultimately meant slow death by starvation, overwork, or typhus for most. Some were shot or hung at the post as an example, for crimes such as not working hard enough or asking for more food. Some committed suicide. The chance of survival at Auschwitz was 1 in 26.

We’ve all seen the photos, the documentaries and films, maybe read some books. There are plenty of photos online should you want some visual context. I took just two: the quote you see above and the memorial stone below. I didn’t want to take anymore. On the coach journey from Krakow to Oświęcim – the Polish village were Auschwitz was built - we watched a documentary shot by a Soviet military film crew, titled Chronicle of the Liberation of the Camp, which stunned the entire coach into sombre silence. The film itself, providing an insight into camp life and showing footage of prisoners bearing lasting effects of their persecution and medical experiments, evoked disbelief, anger, and tears. But then actually being at Auschwitz, walking through that gate with its stunningly ironic motto "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free) ... it becomes very, very real. You’re no longer watching a film or looking at a photograph; you are confronted with the reality, the evidence and the context of genocide. The most deplorable crime against humanity it is possible to commit. Standing on the same soil where so many people were executed hits you square in the gut. As it should. And that’s why we chose to visit. George Santayana’s quote, which is displayed in the first exhibit block we entered, sums up the reason for anyone to visit. It’s our obligation to know and to understand the reasons for, and the impact of our history. It’s harrowing, sobering, frustrating (in the sense you feel impotent to do much in preventing continued persecution of minority groups) and emotionally exhausting. But if we forget or ignore the mistakes and atrocities of the past, it is that much easier for such crimes against humanity to continue to be committed.

My first thought, as we stepped through that gate, was that it didn’t look too bad. I immediately felt hideous, and ashamed of myself for having that thought. I had been mentally steadying myself for what I was about to experience, and my mind was awash with the scenes from the documentary. The mind has a way of protecting itself against that which is difficult to observe or acknowledge. And, of course, it wasn’t the dead of winter, with snow or mud from the thaw casting a bleak veneer over the neatly laid out red brick buildings. And, of course, the ground wasn’t littered with excrement, vermin or worse. And the poplar trees, that were planted by the Nazis along the paths between each row of barracks to make the place look beautiful, swayed soothingly in the breeze.

I didn’t really know what to expect, other than to brace myself for an emotionally hard few hours. The red brick barracks, or blocks, of Auschwitz 1 (the first camp to be built) which once housed the inmates, the infirmary, the medical research block and the prison cells, now house the exhibits: the stories, the photographs and the artefacts that vividly bring to life existence in camp - the material evidence of the degradation of human life; of torture and mass slaughter.

At the liberation of Auschwitz, the SS guards ‘liquidated’ as much evidence as they could (including prisoners who worked in the gas chambers and crematoriums and bore witness to the crimes), but they did not burn all of it and what remains is haunting. This material evidence of crime is displayed in large glass panelled cases within the various blocks.

Peering through the doors into the squalid sleeping quarters, shuffling through the dark narrow corridor that led to the prison cells and isolation cells, walking past the hanging post, and standing in front of the shooting wall was utterly dreadful; but it was the evidence of the real people who suffered their barbaric fate that hit me particularly hard:

A sickeningly large pile of human hair. Hair shaved from the heads of prisoners before they were gassed was shipped off to factories to be turned in to textiles; to make army uniforms and line the boots of navy cadets. Most of it was greying over time, but the odd blonde plait stood out. Hair that once belonged to ordinary people, just like you and me, until all their human rights and their human dignities were stripped from them. 7,000 kilos of human hair were reported to be found on the liberation of the camp. Who knows how much more was shipped out.

The suitcases! A mound of suitcases with the owners’ names, sometimes addresses, written on them. Identifying marks … their individual identities, before they became just a number. But more than that, their naive belief and hopes that they would retain or be reunited with their luggage.

The photographs lining the walls of one the blocks in which prisoners slept. So many photos representing such a small percentage of the total number of prisoners, each with their date of birth, date of internment and date of death. The time between the latter two was short. Many lasted just a month or two in Auschwitz. I wanted to look into the eyes of every one of them, to read their names and their professions, to acknowledge their lives and their suffering. But we shuffled quickly along the corridor to more awful exhibits.

There were other items: piles of pairs of glasses; mounds of shoes (the high heels - they didn’t know they would be stood cramped on a train for several days – and the baby shoes were especially striking); prosthetic limbs removed from the sick before they were directed straight to the gas chamber; enamel crockery; brushes and combs; teeth (removed from the bodies of the dead victims, the gold extracted to be melted down and profited from).

These items on display were just a fraction of the total personal belongings confiscated from prisoners on their arrival at Auschwitz. All belongings were taken to the Canada Room – so called because it was considered the land of plenty! – where they were sorted and sold or re-purposed for profit by the Nazis. And although these items left in camp after liberation that the SS guards were not able to destroy are a mere fraction of the total, they are still numerous enough to impact their meaning on your heart.

We looked at a model of the gas chamber as we heard how prisoners were led to believe they were taking a shower. Even given a piece of soap and a paper towel, so as not to cause mass panic or resistance which would have made the killing process less efficient. We saw empty Zyklon-B cans as we heard about the cost-effectiveness of the gas chambers for mass killing. Then we entered the one gas chamber that was at Auschwitz 1. We stood inside it. We stood inside the gas chamber. Where hundreds of thousands died. A small, dark concrete room built into the ground, into which Zyklon-B pellets were dropped. 700-1,000 people at a time would be crammed into the chamber to die. It took up to 20 minutes for them all to be dead. The gas chambers were built into the ground to help with the heat intensity required to release the cyanide. So many people were crammed in at once for the same reason, heat intensity, and also to ensure a steady flow of victims. Such efficiency in mass extermination. I’m sobbing again as I write this. I can only begin to imagine the absolute terror. And I fail to imagine the evil required of a human mind and soul to orchestrate such a thing. We walked from the gas chamber into the next room; the incinerator. I think I expressed my disapproval out loud when a couple of our group enthusiastically took photos of the ovens that were used to burn the dead bodies.

More heinous – if possible – than this method of death, was the suffering inflicted on those who were chosen for medical experiments, initiated and sanctioned by Himmler. In the medical research blocks, criminals such as Clauberg and Schuman undertook painful and permanently damaging experiments on women into ovarian cancer; and used prisoners to conduct sterilisation experiments utilising x-rays and castration techniques to support their goal of eradicating undesirable populations. Meanwhile, Mengele was experimenting on any twins he could get his hands on from the camps, with a view to propagating the master race by finding a way to increase occurrences of Aryan twins and triplets. Any blond haired, blue-eyed kids that arrived in camp were Germanised and adopted by German families.

Following our tour of Auschwitz 1, we drove the 5 minutes to Auschwitz 2 – Birkenau. This is the camp that you may recognise most from photos. The camp at the end of the railway line that shipped prisoners in from across Europe, where selection took place. Quite literally and metaphorically at the end of this line were Birkenau’s 4 gas chambers and the tall towers of the incinerators that prisoners would see as they approached by train. Most of the killing was done at Birkenau. Unlike Auschwitz 1, Birkenau has the eerie, and in this case incredibly sad, feel of a ghost town. One with a truly evil story to tell.

Those that weren’t immediately sent to be gassed lived in one of the rows upon rows of wooden buildings (many of which were later burnt down). They slept in bunks, 3 high, made of wooden slats in concrete stalls … much like you would expect to find factory farmed livestock confined in. With illness rife, those too weak to fight for a position on the top bunk, would lie on the floor, in mud, filth, and vermin, whilst the diarrhoea of the occupants of the top bunks seeped through the wooden slats onto them. If the temperature dipped below -30, they would be given one bucket of coal to stoke the fire, otherwise body heat from the 7 other people they shared cramped bed space with was all the comfort they had. Rations were watery soup (mostly water) and a tiny portion of stale bread once a day. Days were spent walking miles to do back breaking work; starving, cold, weak and at the mercy of sadistic guards.

Absorbing these surroundings and learning about the realities naturally leads you to question the minds of the SS guards who validated the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’; who administered punishments and executed innocents. What goes on in a mind like that? The SS was known to be particularly violent. Initially, membership of this criminal organisation was only open to those of Aryan ancestry, but as the war progressed and more members were required, units were made up of other volunteers and about a third of the total membership were conscripts. Some were pure sadists, others so brainwashed by the Reich they believed what they did was right, but there were those who did not want to inflict such suffering on other human lives. How did they reconcile their actions with their beliefs? How easy it seems to be to de-humanise one set of people and brainwash another set into believing they must eliminate them by whatever means.

Whatever their feelings towards their ‘work’, no human has the right to treat another human as happened in Auschwitz and other concentration camps … nor should they want to. But ethnic cleansing and genocide are still happening today; fuelled by religion, fuelled by deep rooted racism thinly veiled as concern for the strain being placed on ‘our jobs and our welfare system’ by immigrants. Maybe it is some comfort that none of these current genocides matches the scale of the Holocaust, but they still happen.

Many parallels are being drawn between the Nazi regime and the detention camps currently housing migrant children and illegal immigrants across America. Reports of crying children being torn from their crying mothers. Children’s toys being confiscated. There are differences, of course. In Auschwitz, women with children were sent straight to the gas chamber, healthy or not. The camps had no use for children, and while their mothers may have been strong enough to join the workforce, they did not want emotional women to contend with. It was about controlling order. The children were, however, allowed to keep their toy, which they would cling to as they marched naked into the gas chamber. It is for that same reason they led prisoners to believe they were about to take a shower, not enter the gas chamber to meet death. This was done to maintain calm. To maintain control and efficiency.

It struck me again, you can hear about these things, and you can read about them, you can watch the documentaries and you can feel the injustice of it. But when you stand on the very ground where it happened, with very real evidence around you; and when you make the effort to put yourself in their shoes and try to bring to life the reality of their lives in your imagination, to truly empathise with what happened to those innocent people, it knocks you for six how evil humans are capable of being. And how easily they can not just get away with it in the public eye, but actively muster public support for their actions. And this is why we must remember our past, and why we must learn from it and find the meaning in their suffering.[i] For it not to happen again! And yet it has happened again, and it continues to happen.

These crises are happening now:

RohingyaThe Rohingya are a Muslim community living in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. Long seen as second-class citizens, they are considered illegal immigrants and terrorists. As their homes are targeted with military attack, over 700,000 have fled across the border to Bangladesh, creating a refugee crisis. In the last round of attacks in August 2017, over 6,000 were killed. Over 1 million displaced Rohingya are estimated to be living in refugee camps.

SyriaAlthough defeated territorially towards the end of 2017, the effects of genocides committed by ISIS against non-Muslim communities in Syria and Iraq continue to be felt. ISIS sought to eradicate Yazidis, Shiites and Assyrian Christians, killing what is believed to be thousands of people, and displacing many thousands more. Wrapped up with civil war that has been raging for years, Syrian refugees continue to survive in appalling conditions. Shamefully, the UK and US have played a role in fuelling this crisis.

YemenSaudi Arabia has been bombing the Houthis in Yemen in a bid to restore the Yemeni government. They consider the Houthis an Iranian threat so its a case of Sunni dominated Saudi contesting Shiite dominated Iran for influence and power in the Middle East. This is not simply one country waging war on another however; Saudi make deliberate attacks on civilians.Over the past three-plus years, U.S.-backed Saudi airstrikes have produced over 35,000 civilian casualties: over 13,000 killed and over 21,000 injured — including many women and children. This figure, recorded by Yemeni monitoring group Legal Center for Rights and Development, only includes stats from the 1,000-day mark of the war in December of 2017. Countless others have lost their lives since then. The war in Yemen is now the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people -- three-quarters of the population -- in desperate need of aid and protection.

SudanAside from a few periods of fragile peace, Sudan has pretty much been engaged in civil war since it gained independence in 1956. Ethnic killings of non-Arab people by Arab militias began in 2003 in Darfur. It’s estimated that than one million children have been killed, raped, tortured, displaced, or orphaned. Violence increased in 2016. The Darfur genocide was recognised as the first of the 21st century. In South Sudan, the Dinka have been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Nuer and other smaller ethnic groups. The UN asserted a process of ethnic cleansing was underway in 2016, and in 2017 famine was declared in parts of South Sudan. Despite a unilateral ceasefire in 2017, the number of refugees fleeing to Uganda has passed one million.

AmericaAlarmingly it appears as if America, (former) leader of the free world, could become the next fascist regime. It would be easy to classify what is happening in America now as border control. Controlling illegal immigration according to the country’s laws. But the way in which this is being done gives cause for concern. The imprisonment of thousands of migrant children in detention camps under Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy stinks of ethnic cleansing. There are reports of these children being held in cages; being verbally, mentally, physically and sexually abused; being force-fed drugs; having their toys confiscated; and having to comfort and take care of each other. This is bureaucratic, systematic child abuse. Meanwhile, Trump’s media machine is positioning these children as actors, liars, and miscreants – de-humanising them.

Trump’s bid to free America of illegal immigrants; to free America from the scourge of immigrants who take jobs from Americans, and place a burden on the system might seem to many supporters like a fantastic, and above-board action (disregarding for now the proven economic benefits of the immigrant population). But, this follows his proclamations that he will build a border wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. This follows his travel restrictions imposed on certain Muslim countries. A ban that was just upheld today by the US supreme court, prohibiting most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen from entering the US.

Last year, the US stated its intention to leave UNESCO – the UN’s cultural organisation with the remit of protecting sites of cultural, historical and environmental importance – at the end of next year. The reason cited was anti-Israel bias. America will owe unpaid arrears of $6 million dollars when it leaves. It also stated its intention to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. In the last two months the US has also pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, and most recently the UN Human Rights Council. The Trump administration is removing freedoms and liberties at will, with flagrant disregard for law and morality; alienating America from its allies; and eschewing human rights. All whilst waving the flag and convincing supporters they are making America white again … I mean, great again. (It wasn't white to start with) The whole world is wondering what will come next.

Land (oil), religion and power all play their part but however motivated, ethnic cleansing is a precursor to genocide. Genocide was recognised under the UN Convention on Genocide in 1951. Under the Convention, all 149 UN states that ratified or acceded to the Convention have a duty to ‘prevent and punish’ genocide. It is better than nothing, but yet it still continues.

​​This is human nature. Can we ever stamp it out? As long as religion, believed racial superiority, and greed provide the motivation (whether inherent in the individual or encouraged by popular feeling) to those with the power to act, wars will tear apart countries, and human rights violations will continue. It seems the capacity of some to inflict limitless suffering on others is indomitable. It is hard to change human nature. Those who are truly evil will remain to be so. But also, as long as those of us who object to such abhorrent human behaviour have knowledge, understanding and a voice, we can hope to mitigate the impact. I hope!

​[i] I re-read Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ during this trip. Frankl spent three years in various concentration camps, including Auschwitz where he was when it was liberated. A psychiatrist and neurologist, he talks about suffering and finding meaning in it; in the ability of the human spirit to bear any amount of suffering, so long as there is a why! Frankl’s mental strength was extraordinary, much more so than most, though he helped a great many during his time in camp. His work is fascinating, profound and thought provoking.